Guys. For real. Glee is the best show on earth.

Dad was sold on this idea of going back to teach and do God’s Work, as he calls it, and seeing as how Dad’s been talking about making this change for, oh, let’s say, a decade or so, we decided to just let him roll with it and then laugh hysterically at the age/ culture/ education gap between him and the teenagers that God has selected for him to work on. He’s already given us some great material. Within two weeks he had a day where he came home completely astonished that someone had used the phrase “brain fart” to describe the mental lapse that they were having during a class discussion. The way my dad talked about the idiom Brain Fart you would have thought it was {any number of phrases I use for verbal shock value but won’t put on this website in case any of my young relatives are reading this. Stay in school, kids!}. But it seems that Brain Fart got my Dad over the proverbial culture shock gap and now he’s really enjoying interacting with his students. He recently put together what sounds like it could have been the most epically boring field trip ever for his law class and took them to hang out at the court house for a day, but since he has a bunch of Judge Friends from back when he had a real job, the kids had a great time. We asked if they watched any actual proceedings, and he said that they happened into a Dueling Grandmas case where two Grandmas started yelling at each other during their custody hearing. “It was great! One of them started screaming that the other one was in the Bloods or the Crips or something! My kids loved it!”

We had a family wedding this weekend, and during the pre-reception downtime we wound up having some beers and talking about William Shatner. I think this grew out of a conversation about Little Brother Peej’s band, which covers Common People every now and again, because every time someone mentions that song I have to talk about William Shatner. Then Katie Bud’s Wife commented that she respected William Shatner for embracing the fact that he’s a caricature of himself, and that it was proving to be great for his career, and I went “Yeah, like how Rick Astley showed up in the Macy’s parade this year.”

And my dad perked up from the other side of the table and went “Are you guys talking about Rickrolling?”

Oh, my god. My dad knows what rickrolling is. My dad, who wears sweatpants in public. My dad, who used to call me at work to ask how to operate our microwave.

After I explained what it was to the rest of the table and, perhaps, sang a little bit of Never Gonna Give You Up, Dad added to my explanation by informing us that part of the joke is that if you find yourself being rickrolled, you’re not allowed (honor system, I guess?) to close out of the internet window. You have to watch the entire video. I didn’t know about this part, but I’m proud of whoever came up with this rule.

It turns out that my dad’s school just had their Homecoming dance. One of the students was so pleased with his own performance on the dance floor that he started canvassing his classmates the next day to see if anyone had a video of him tearing it up at the dance, so that he could watch it over and over for years to come. And one of his buddies saw this wide open door, hit “reply all” and rickrolled him. And everyone at the school loved the story so much that now my dad, who once asked me “can you rewind on this thing?” after we had set up his new DVD player, knows what rickrolling is. And I think to myself… what a wonderful world.

Until that happens, I’m going to continue to explore all means of distraction during the 80 minutes it takes me to get to my office. Usually I get by on This American Life, but yesterday I managed to listen to the same Rihanna song on repeat for the entire time. I don’t know what happened, it was like I had a stroke or something. I thought about who would most appreciate this and narrowed it down to Cousin Erin (from a possible pool of 1). Via text:

Cristin (7:09 am): New favorite game- how many times can I listen to Rihanna’s Take a Bow while waiting for the train?

Erin (7:13 am): 3 tops

Cristin (7:14 am): I’m already up to 6. I love this. She’s so angry!

And she is (really. Read the lyrics, and watch the video. This will be important later). And I couldn’t get over it (obviously, if I listened to the song close to 20 times before I even punched in at work).

Via Email:

From: Cristin
To: Erin

I listened to this song all the way to work. That’s over an hour of Rihanna singing the. Same. Song. As a result, I have some pretty excellent ideas for the music video-way better than the ones she actually went with, according to my YouTube perusal this morning. I know you can’t watch video at work, but I need you to really familiarize yourself with the lyrics before I can take you, scene by scene, through my vision.

I can’t figure out why I’m so into Women Scorned music (yes, I think this should be an actual genre-just like Thug Love {eg, Put It On Me and all those songs that were bad when we were in college) considering I’ve never actually been one myself. But this song, Irreplaceable, Since U Been Gone… I can’t get enough. It’s a sickness.

PS In continuing with my goal to not blow dry my hair until September, you should know that I have a serious 80s ‘fro right now. I look like (cousin) Traci’s prom picture.

PPS I already know that this (or, the follow up with my music video
plan) will be the best email you receive all day. I’m sorry to tell you that the rest of your Monday is going to be an enormous letdown.

When I got home last night, the Peej was taking advantage of our mom’s giant inventory of cable channels, watching Rattle and Hum on VH1 Classics. I convinced him that it was a good idea to watch the MTV reality show where they search for the next girl to play Elle Woods on Broadway (how this show isn’t called “Give ‘em Elle!” I will never understand) even though I’m confused about why they chose Haylie Duff to be the host. “Why don’t they just get her to play Elle Woods?” Peej asked. Genius. Haylie Duff kept mentioning her own Broadway career, which I was surprisingly unaware of. Wikipedia tells me she was in Hairspray (okay, who wasn’t), but even more fantastically, the entry opens by saying that Haylie is “best known for being the sister of Hilary Duff and her supporting role on 7th Heaven.” Someone put Haylie on suicide watch, doublequick. Anyway.

I launched into my carefully crafted music video idea for peej and, after asking me if I had done a little “wake n bake” that morning prior to getting on the train (I had to ask what that meant, and apparently it involves waking up and immediately getting stoned. Good to know), I told Peej about how I find myself loving all these songs where women tell their cheating men to “get gone,” in the words of Rihanna, even though I’ve never been in their position (if this sentence isn’t tempting fate, I don’t know what is. I can’t wait for my next boyfriend to cheat on me with an NYU undergrad. If you’re reading this, bucko, then trust me– you do not want to go there), and Peej explained “Aristotle would say that you enjoy them because they allow you to experience that set of emotions in a safe environment,” driving the final nail into the coffin of my term as Smartest Stickles Child.

From: Erin

To: Cristin

I like Take a Bow, but I don’t love it yet. The reason I didn’t immediately love it is because she sings then talks… For example: You’re so ugly when you cry. Please. For some reason I don’t like that.

From: Cristin

To: Erin

I understand your concerns about the song, but I think interjecting spoken words into it actually adds a humanizing element to what she’s trying to convey. She’s using sarcasm as a defense mechanism, but by viewing her boyfriend’s betrayal as something of a play she’s also allowing herself to view it from a third person standpoint which, I’d assume, lessens the blow.

My video concept borrows from what we saw with No Diggity, but with more of a soulful element. It involves a series of alternating scenes, all showing the jilted Rihanna and the lover who cuckholded her. In one set of scenes, much like in the actual video, Rihanna is inside her palatial estate, peering out the window to the sidewalk below, where her former gentleman caller is making a variety of attempts at expressing his regret. He is surrounded by flowers, and is lighting a series of tea lights that spell out either “I Love You” or “I’m Sorry,” depending on what the focus groups prefer. Rihanna, however, is having none of that.

 

The OTHER series of scenes take place in a darkened lounge, where one might enjoy a lusty cabaret act. Rihanna sits alone at a round table for two– she is the only audience member. As she croons her theater/ relationship metaphor, the velvet curtains part and two marionettes– think Sound of Music’s Lonely Goatherd meets Team America World Police– begin to go through the motions of courtship on stage (I also considered using ventriloquist dummies for this portion but wanted the puppets to be on stage alone). As we cut to and from Rihanna’s home withthe dramatic scene going on in her driveway, the puppets coyly meet and fall in love, and the male puppet kneels and proffers a diamond ring as the female puppet covers her mouth in surprise and joy, weeping. Back at her house, Rihanna removes a framed picture of her and a smiling young woman from the wall and smashes it against the floor while her former paramour arranges the candles outside into a heart, leading us to believe that the woman he strayed with was someone close to our heroine. Meanwhile, on stage, the puppets are going through their own breakup– though the male puppet begs and pleads, his exlover won’t listen, and she finally exits, strings taut, stage left, leaving him alone and dejected. The puppet raises his head to make eye contact with Rihanna in the audience, and she rises to her feet and turns away from him as the curtains close in front of him. As she walks, dejectedly but with determination, towards the camera, we notice that she’s wearing the exact same outfit as the female marionette whose love life we just watched crumble before our very eyes.

 

Back home, Rihanna closes her eyes and inhales deeply, then walks towards a small panel in her hallway and flips a switch, turning her lawn sprinklers on. The last thing we see if the heart-shaped arrangement of candles as their flames are doused.

You cannot even imagine how pleased I am with myself for coming up with this.

 
Meg’s Memorial Day from Cristin Stickles on Vimeo.